I don't think it makes you a better rider but you understand more of whats happening to your bike or for that matter your car if you work on it. For example you may notice something that doesn't feel right when riding. If you take it to the mechanic, and many of us don't trust half of the mechanics out there, and tell him the symptoms he may end up doing something that wasn't necessary or not fix the problem. If you understand your bike and have an idea of what's wrong with it then your likelyness to get ripped off has been reduced. You are lucky you have a trustworthy mechanic. Many of us don't and have been literally screwed by them. That probably the main reason people work on their own bikes.

I didn't think I was missing out until I had a bike shop service my rear brakes. It including replacing the rear line with a goodridge line, changing fluid, changing the pads, and bleeding the whole system.

Everything was great until I got a few miles from the shop and used my rear brake coming up to a light at which point the caliper jumped off the rear rotor.

The reason...someone had set the caliper on the rotor while reassembling everything but must have walked away for something and never actually put the mounting bolts in.

I know that for a fact because when I went back to the shop and walked into the service area to start bitching up a storm, I found the bolts sitting on the table next to where they had just been working on the bike!

It was pretty much that point at which I started doing all of my own work. The only thing I still go in for is to have my tires mounted and I'm starting to think about give that a go as well.

Yeah, he's a really good guy. There were a couple of times I thought something serious was wrong, and he was like "no, it's just (something simple)" when he easily coulda taken me for a ride. He's actually fixed a couple of small things for me free of charge. It's just him and one other guy in the shop, and his wife works the register / merchandise area - it's a small family business. Guess I got lucky I refer him a lot of business also so I guess that can't hurt...

i say do it yourself, understanding how something works, how to know if something is broken and how to fix it can certainly make you a better at whatever it is.

also the money saved adds up Really fast. the more money saved means the more money i can put into the bike(parts) ,rather than dumping money into the labor.

the last time i took my bike for service was an oil change. cost me around 90$ i think, generic oil. they over filled the oil and it took a few hours of me waiting around for it. recent oil change i used good oil and filter, took me all of 15 minutes and cost like 30 at the most. if 60$ isnt a big enough savings for you or the time it takes at a shop then let them do it.

im trying to do all the work on my car and my bike from now on. the money is reason enough but also its pretty fun to get in there and do the work(my newest hobby lol).

Yeah I just had to drop my tires off to get them swapped on the rims .. almost a week later and they were just 'getting to it.' And I only took them in there because they said that they would do it quick. I hear bike tires are a pain in the arse without the machine though. I'd go in halves on one with you maybe.

My words exactly...

Though I don't think you have to..
I mean Rossi doesn't

If you have all the tools needed, and the area required, not to mention the know how, go for it. I enjoy working on cars, even went to school for it. Military moves me around, and now I don't have a garage. I can do the drive way stuff but will not even attempt to break anyting down further with out having the right place to do it. Labor will break a person quick. Boils down to time, money and the willingness to jump in and do it. Doesn't hurt to know a bit about mechanics. I've been reading the online manual that was posted here awhile back. My first go around will be SS break lines. Oil changes are far to easy not to do yourself. Worse case senario, you break down some where and there's you or bubba. Try and learn as much as you can about your ride. $0.02

I think most of us who do our own work are in one of three camps, I think:

(A) Sometime in the past, some shop screwed something up (or screwed someone over), so there's an inherent distrust. I know for me it came when the shop I had been using for years (a Suzuki dealer) put a "newbie" fresh MMI graduate on my bike for a 15k service and he either over-torqued or under-torqued the oil drain bolt on reassembly. 100 miles later and the bolt fell out, pouring a ton of hot oil right in front of the rear tire as I was braking towards the back of a cop car at a red-light. Although he's been canned during the interim (not as a direct result of this), and the shop towed the bike in, fixed and gave it back free of charge, I'm still leery of doing anything through them that I don't have to, and am very very finicky about which mechanic does do that which I'm not willing to do myself. And for the record, that was my first Kat, not my current one (which I've done all the work on).

(B) We're basically cheap and capable. I can do my own work, and take pride in it. 85% of the cost of a 7.5k/15k service is labor... why should I pay the shop $80/hr to do the labor when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself? If I get busy enough (business-wise) that I can't find the time -- and I'm pulling in more than that per hour -- then I'll turn it over to a mechanic, but otherwise I'll do it, thanks all the same. The only exceptions are a few specific things I don't do for a lack of facilities, tools or temper -- tire mounting (facilities, tools) & fork rebuilds (temperament). There was a time I would turn it over for a valve adjustment if it happened to fall late July/early August here in Tampa (too hot, humid for my tastes), but now I either break it into multiple days or arrange it before and after the summer heat peak instead.

(C) Knowledge, trust and not being stranded. I know what's right and what's wrong with my bike. I know what it will take to fix it. Even when I had a shop doing much of my work, I knew when they were lying to me. And because of how I ride, where I ride, when I ride, if the bike gives up on me, I know how to get it going again for anything shy of a total self-demolition. I won't be stuck paying for someone to tow it 75 miles to the closest shop and hotels until that shop opens in three days, then another who-knows-how-long until parts arrive & it gets repaired. I had an episode like that when I was still a newbie rider in '84, where I was trapped in Birmingham for three weeks -- and I'll never go through it again.

There's nothing wrong with using a dealer, if you feel you can trust them and the prices are within your comfort zone.
I'm absolutely sure most BMW riders do just that, for example. But I suspect that the same reasons that often cause people to purchase Kats instead of more expensive alternatives also push them to do their own work...

EDIT/AFTERTHOUGHT: Most mechanics I know aren't the smartest individuals...

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

LITERALLY

Wow! I didn't realize that people were actually having fasteners driven into their bodies by mechanics. I guess that would be cool if it were into that sort of thing... Otherwise, RUN! I think I would start working on my bike too if oily men were trying to screw me, literally. I think the word you were looking for was figuratively. Sorry Jax, had to jump on you (not in that way, dude) grammatically.

+1 to B and C

being a car mechanic myself, i want to know beyond any doubt that my bike is right. too big of a chance for me to take with anyone else. i've never been screwed by a dealer, because ever since i learned to drive i worked on my own cars, mostly out of necessity in the beginning(flat broke!), but i really enjoy working on my bike.

I'm cheap....


Just did a plug change/TB sync/TPS adjust this weekend....got quoted $225 by a local shop, paid $14 in parts and did it myself.

I do the work on my bike for the same reason you did the work on your Kitchen. It saves me money and I know it's done right.

Money has been tight this last year and a half so being able to do my own Valve adjustments saves me some major cash that I didn't really have to invest in keeping the bike 100%.

I have the garage space, I have the free time and the basic knowledge. Besides it's not like I have anything better to do half the time. I'm stuck home with the kids so it's not an issue to tinker on the bike while they're playing in the yard.

If I had the tools and know-how (I'm learning slowly) I'd be doing more around the house too. But right now most major home projects are on hold pending actually working enough to have the money. Of course once I start working full time again I won't have the time for household projects so it's a catch-22 .

Cheap and been stranded a few times , so I learned some stuff . Helps though , because you can have a better feel for what the bike may need ("Welp , feels like it's running rich again...") .

Very interesting responses. I guess every bike I've owned has been relatively new and hasn't required much expensive maintenance. My Kat is an '02, but I just hit 6K this weekend. I bet some of you guys ride more than that in a year. When I take the bike in I bring it in for oil changes, tire changes - stuff like that. I had the valve adjustment done, but I don't remember that being overly expensive either. An oil change is like $70 with filter and synthetic oil (Motul, I think) so that's no real expense. I usually bring it in every six months because I don't put many miles on. I've had the brakes done (fronts) and the fluid changed, but again I don't remember that being real expensive.

As I'm thinking about it, I guess I really don't like "dirty work". All the cosmetic changes to the bike I've done myself.

I guess there are two reasons I don't mind doing things in the house. It's usually "clean" work and I know how much $$$ I'm saving. Plus, I like things done a certain way, particularly when it comes to painting.

When we first moved into my current house about 3 years ago all the walls were white. My wife, of course, did not like this color scheme. We got quotes to paint the interior of the house and they ranged from $5K-$7K. I almost had a heart attack! I agreed to paint a room a month and using Benjamin Moore paint I think it cost me $1,500 max including tape and rollers (I use rollers once and throw them out - hate cleaning them) and I tape the crap out of everything. I hate roller marks, paint on mouldings, uneven lines near the ceiling so I made sure they were not there...

I didn't finish in the room a month timeframe because I got sidetracked remodeling the bathrooms. That was almost an accident because Costco (an outlet store down here) had these two beautiful double sink vanities that were closeouts and I had to buy them. $1,200 for both with cherry wood and granite countertops. Then began the bathroom remodels because once I got ready to change the vanities, I had to mess with the tile first (natural stone has to go with natural stone so down came the ceramic), then the light fixtures, then the towel racks - you get the idea. The paint came last

Of course, as I continue my wife starts with the old "you know what would look nice" routine. Then comes the crown moulding, plantation shutters, turning a closet into a workstation with desk and cabinets and a window (I had to pay someone to do that - can't put in a window where there isn't one already - don't know how).

Alright, this is getting too long, but you see what I mean - all the above jobs were "clean" and saved me a ton of $$$. I buy closeout items whenever I can - tile, moulding, vanities. My friend just had his master bath redone for over $10K and it looks nice, but nothing special. I'm not saying mine is any better, but with a vanity, new tub with jets and new tile (floor and wall) it cost me less than $2K - and that includes paint

Then my wife started in with the kitchen backsplash and I just had to do it because I couldn't listen to her anymore. I'm very happy with it and so is she, but now she wants the garage better organized It never ends. We have shelves and a very neat garage, but my neighbor just got this whole "garage storage system" installed and it's very nice, but super expensive and we have the damn shelves. So there's my next project. Again, a clean job

Funny thing is that I never do any garden work - I just hate it. I never really thought about it, but I guess it's the whole dirty thing. Good thing is landscape work is cheap down here

Well, kudos to those of you who know your bikes and turn them into finely tuned machines. I just trust that mine is finely tuned...

Don't work on the cars either other than washing them, but luckily I also have a trusted mechanic of over 10 years - he used be my neighbor. I know he's not the best mechanic when it comes to diagnostics, but I also know he's super honest. It's a bit of a trade-off, but one I can live with.

Well, if you read this whole thing you're probably ready for a nap know so get some sleep It's off to bed for me to dream about the perfect garage...